Customer Reviews

Pilot Error: Anatomy of a Plane Crash

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

But sometimes it seems that way and for New York lawyer Ron Sinzheimer, on October 9, 1998, it was beyond dangerous, it was deadly. There aren't any more General Aviation accidents here than other parts of the country and there's nothing particularly stunning about this one so there's little reason to remember it. A man and the family dog in a single engine Grumman Traveler flying into the Cape to link up with his wife and son at their vacation home. Because I remember this accident, live nearby in Brewster, and it speaks to something of keen interest to me, my perception of the book may be quite colored and thus this "five-star" review. Nevertheless Phaedra Hise has written a compelling story that will be of interest to a much broader audience than GA pilots and people who live on the Cape.

The challenges associated with flying to and from the Cape are all to do with weather, specifically fog and haze. That means "instrument flight rules" and talking about flying as different from "visual flight rules" as night is from day. Besides the personal tragedy to the Sinzheimer family, the thrust of Hise's book is that once a pilot has lost visual reference to the horizon things very quickly begin to unwind. It takes a sharp pilot to sort out the conflict between what his senses say - "i'm turning" - and what the instruments read - wings are level. PILOT ERROR is too innocuous a description for the multitude of things (mostly bad) that are taking place in such situations. Sometimes the various instruments seem to be contradicting each other and you must fight the panic that comes when your mind screams that it needs a visual reference in order to understand.

Hise could have used a famous case that everyone would have remembered in order to get across her message that instrument flight rules are a critical skill for any GA pilot. The struggle with understanding what his instruments were telling him was the same for John F Kennedy Jr when he was flying through haze on the way to Martha's Vineyard in 1999. Using his flight would have meant focusing on him rather than where the real story is - five small instrument dials, that GA pilots must be absolutely familiar with - lest we become an accident statistic or the subject of a powerfully descriptive and very well written book.

In Pilot Error, Phaedra Hise masterfully recreates on the page the lone-pilot crash of Ron Sinzheimer, en route to Cape Cod from Albany on a cloud-bound Friday night. A pilot herself and a deft writer, Hise spins a taught story of the bad weather, bad luck, hubris and random events that ensnared the star lawyer in his tragic flight. At the same time she informs readers on the roles of the many professionals who make America's air traffic as remarkably safe as it is. Hise has created a moving and enlightening vignette that avoids melodrama even in the gut-wrenching scenes where Sinzheimer's wife, Marsha, slowly comes to grips with the fact that her husband is not coming home. The book ultimately makes his fate more than just another forgotten human tragedy. Hise should be commended. At the same time, Pilot Error is a read you put down only when you need to take a deep breath and whisper to yourself, "There but for the grace of God . . . ." After reading this book, those of us who ride behind the cockpit will never take our crew or air traffic controllers for granted again.

I read this book and concluded that I am angry at myself for having read it. Pilots like to read about accidents hoping to study a case and avoid the same mistakes. After wasting your time with worthless and mediocre family stories and the well known government incompetence, you end up with the empty conclusion that a good pilot, in good health, all current and confident ditched in the stormy ocean at night and disappeared. None of the worthless stories or ILS text in this book provides any conclusion or lesson to be learned. A line from Billy Madison comes to mind: "you are now all dumber after hearing this story". In fact the only intelligent thought comes from an opinion of a reader that raises the theory that Ron S. used a GPS approach rather than ILS and that proved fatal.